What Freelancers Can Learn from Facebook About How to Earn More Money

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Getting paid as a freelancer is hard to figure out… at least at
first.

Once you get going, though, it provides a flexibility and freedom
that’s hard to beat. Oh yeah, and if you play your cards right,
it can pay you a pretty penny as well.

I know this to be true because I’ve done high-end freelancing for
some of Silicon Valley’s hottest tech startups—companies that
share investors with Facebook, Google, Twitter, Dropbox and many
more. Before that, I was a startup COO. I co-founded a company
called Serious Business that was acquired by Zynga, ran
personnel and operations for Powerset (which was acquired by Microsoft) and was
an executive at CrowdFlower.

The combination of these experiences has taught me that there is
a lot that freelancers and solopreneurs can learn from Silicon
Valley startups. It’s also taught me that there are a lot of ways
that startups operate that make absolutely no sense for a
freelancer or solopreneur to mimic.

Unfortunately, too often freelancers and solopreneurs
apply all of the wrong startup lessons to their own
businesses. I’m here to help you sort out which startup
tips and tricks are valuable for you and which are not. That way,
you can get on with getting paid to do work you love and enjoy
the freedom that working for yourself affords.

Let’s take Facebook as our prototypical startup…

Two things Facebook has done since its startup days that have
made it the wildly successful business it has become:

Facebook focused on “viral growth” and scaling its audience
before spending effort and focus on “monetizing” (or making
money) from its audience. Zuckerberg knew that if he could get
the audience large enough, the money would take care of itself.

Instead of holing up until the site was indestructible and
every feature that customers might want was built, Facebook
practiced “iterative development.” The product was live to the
public well before it was full of features, and the site often
crashed. Facebook used this real-world testing (and the sense of
urgency that comes with it) to quickly improve its offering with
very small incremental improvements.

Both of these approaches worked for Facebook. But what do they
mean for you as a freelancer or solopreneur?

One of these practices is the key to your success. The
other will likely lead to your demise.

Read on to find out which is which…

Audience before offer?

Do any of these sound familiar?

“Before I try and sell something, I should have a long and proven
track record for providing value for free.”

“Once I get thousands of Twitter followers, it will be so much
easier to make money.”

“I need at least a few hundred regular blog readers to create a
paid service or offering.”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Yes, Facebook focused exclusively on building its audience
knowing that “the money would come,” but here’s one thing
Facebook quickly had that your freelancing or solopreneur
practice likely will not: millions of dollars of venture capital
financing.

Silicon Valley startups are not just out to build a “healthy
audience.” They are out to reach massive scale (think many
millions of users) because, at the end of the day, their
investors are only happy if they can reach a value of $100
million—or preferably $1 billion. Their businesses model is
“Billion or Bust.”

My hunch is that as a freelancer or solopreneur, the “Billion or
Bust” business model won’t work for you, unless you have a trust
fund you’re inheriting from Bill Gates.

If you don’t want to live on Ramen noodles or stay
forever stuck at a job you want to quit, you are going to need
fund this business yourself. So finding your offer—not
becoming a Superblogger or Social Media Maven—is priority number
one.

What’s your offer? It’s simple: whatever it is that you intend to
sell as a freelancer or solopreneur.

Eff it, we’ll do it live!

If you’ve never watched this clip of Bill O’Reilly screaming
“F$%! it, we’ll do it live!” take a moment to fall on the floor
laughing:

Sometimes the best way to get something right is to do it with a
live audience.

Sure, it’s a little scary, but what you gain is
invaluable: real-world feedback. Instead of guessing,
you find out immediately what’s working and what’s not. And you
have pressure to quickly adjust.

That’s the genius of the “iterative development” approach that
Facebook (and many other top Silicon Valley companies) use to
build their products. As a freelancer or solopreneur, you can use
that very same approach to identify and build out the offer
you’re going to use to fund your business.

Here are three benefits of this approach:

You can start making money now. You don’t have
to wait until you’re an online celebrity to get started.
Instead, you can test your offer out with a few people at a
time. With each test, you’ll learn a little more about your
offer and you’ll increase your income.

Your early customers become partners. If you
explain your process appropriately, your earliest customers
will partner with you to make your offer better by giving you
much-needed feedback. They’ll even pay you to create your offer
in the first place.

You can build the right audience. You’ll
quickly understand who your ideal customer is and what’s
important to him or her. Now, you can build an audience of
potential customers, rather than an audience of people who like
to laugh at your cat pictures.

So as a freelancer, though it’s tempting, leave the “build an
audience first and worry about the offer later” approach to
Facebook and other viral growth businesses. When it comes to
building your offer, though, take a page out of the startup
playbook and use the “iterative development approach”—do it live
and do it now!

Ryan Ferrier is the creator of the 60 Day
MBA business building program. To join him for a free webinar
on how to make your first $1,000 as a freelancer, register here.